In general, banks and retail stores use currency processing machines to process money received during the regular course of business. Machines that sort, count, and authenticate currency bills and coins have become valuable tools in maintaining accurate and up-to-date financial statements. Providing automated machines that are programmed to perform particular functions, e.g., automatically sorting and counting cash received in a register till, improves the efficiency of a business.
Some activities are performed routinely and are generally the same in all businesses that exchange currency on a daily basis. For example, retail stores generally require that all the money from a cash receptacle or register till, which includes currency bills and coins, be counted after an operator's work-shift is over, such as at the end of the day. The money from the till is counted, and then deposited into a money safe or vault. Often, a pre-selected amount of money is placed back in the till so that the next work-shift has a base amount for the start of the next shift. In the preceding example, generally, an operator must count the money from the till, compare the cash register receipts to the counted totals, and then put a base amount of money for the next work-shift in the till. Two problems associated with the “counting down” of a cash till in the described manner are the potential for human error and the time it takes to manually perform the counting tasks.
Therefore, there is a need for a system that decreases the potential for human error and decreases the amount of time involved in performing tasks related to the counting and preparation of a cash receptacle.